Welcome to the personal blog of Joe Hackman. Joe is an Entrepreneur, IT Consultant and Blog Talk Radio host. Joe has great interest in community and conversation.
I posted my Facebook status yesterday that I was watching “Lawrence of Arabia” when one of my friends made a suggestion, which led to more and more suggestions from other friends so I started to compile a list of movies I plan to watch:
The past few days Facebook has been rolling out a new user interface and I absolutely love it. Not hearing rave reviews from some folks though so I thought I’d do a quick screencast and explain where the important features are located.
This morning I woke up and while scanning Twitter for news I noticed @Mashable has an article about a Facebook re-tweet feature. This is kind of a big deal for Facebook users but many Facebook users aren’t also Twitter users so I knew it would be useful to do a screencast to demonstrate the feature and talk about the benefits. The two reasons you should use it:
To provide the person who original shared the content credit for their efforts.
To encourage your friends to become fans of similar content that interests you.
Here is a screen cast demonstration of how to use the feature:
Today I watched part of the Arizona – Green Bay playoff game. I left to take my son outside to ride his bike and thought the game was a blowout. I noticed a friend had posted on my Facebook comment about the game that Green Bay was making a comeback so I turned the game back on. At that point I was riveted to the game, exchanging comments on Facebook as a very close game was decided in overtime. It reminded me how important in life and business it is to never give up. You will win and you will lose, learn from the mistakes and don’t let the victories make you complacent.
While watching a video today by @garyvee today I was both validated and also inspired to write this post. Gary’s point was simple – if you want to get anywhere using social media to promote something, you have to grab it. You have to engage the people who can make a difference for whatever it is you’re interested in doing. This could be anything from getting a job at a certain company or getting a certain celebrity to wear a product you are marketing. I want to add to what Gary said in his video. We have to understand as a people that the opportunity to network has never been greater in our lifetimes and it is not only possible but it is likely that this window will diminish in the near future. I believe there are two reasons for this and I will get into both of them a little more in depth.
Reason #1 it’s the Economy
A bad economy gives you access to people in an unprecedented way. Case in point – I formed a business group in early 2009 called 1 Degree, several of the members of this group are simply people that would not have joined a group like this had their businesses been running at the typical brisk pace they had been just about every year prior. When you lose your job or customers to a bad economy, you get creative, you put yourself out there. Networking has never been more prolific than it is today, in a good way.
Reason #2 it’s the Technology
Every “new” technology is given a pass on many issues early on. Think back to the chain letters that seemingly reasonable people would forward in the early days of Email. These same people today would not even think twice about it. Or how about the early success of the Email SPAM industry, had it not worked so well people would not have continued to do it. SPAM has to be facilitated today on a huge scale to have any impact. Social networking is really no different from this. Today many people are using geo-tagging software that in essence tells the world where they are at a given moment in time. At some point in the future there will be high profile events that remind people that some privacy is a good thing and these technologies will be used much more sparingly. Or how about the prolific Facebook application posts that are already a bit of a taboo? I’ve seen a number of people create brand new accounts to avoid annoying their real life friends from the prolific wall posts of the latest Zynga game or similar Facebook application. Or how about the “50 things you don’t know about me” it’s a bit like the Facebook equivalent of a chain letter – tag 10 of your friends and post this on your wall.
Action Plan
So Gary is right, but we need to also encourage people to strike while the iron is hot and be prepared for the next stage of this ever evolving world. 15 years ago I forged relationships on Internet Relay Chat with a bunch of people around the US and the World that were Windows NT administrators. The dealings of this group have included quite a bit of commerce over the years and the core is all still communicating with one another. Today similar relationships are being established on Facebook, Twitter and other Social Networking related sites. There will be winners and losers but the people who do as Gary has suggested will find a way to win regardless of the circumstances. I think we all need to evaluate which technologies fit us best and pursue them for personal or commercial benefit. For me the value of the medium is much greater in terms of personal satisfaction for the friendships and inspiration but it’s nice to know that these efforts will continue to open doors for commerce. Let me know what you think. Share your story, plenty of room for your comments here.
I watched a very interesting video this evening. The speaker in the video was Stefana Broadbent, one of a new class of “ethnographers” that is people who study how our social habits and relationships mutate. She cites some very interesting research about intimacy and modern communication apparatus including Skype, Instant Messaging and Facebook. One of the perplexing points is that while someone may have 100 contacts on their Instant Messenger they generally only communicate with a very small percentage of those people. On the surface this really does make sense but without seeing research data to back the issue up there are few certainties in the realm of social media and technology. Ethnographer defined.
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